Tragedy of the Commons

It is a situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long-term interest for it to happen. This theory explains the problem directly of the hunting of Asian pangolins and also indirectly via the destruction of their habitat.

Asian pangolins are traded widely, with the largest demand coming from China. As scarcity drives up prices, the allure of soaring pangolin prices heightened the appeal of industrial-scale poaching in Southeast Asia. There is little incentive for poachers and wildlife traders to stop or curb their actions because the perceived individual profits reaped from the sale of pangolins is much greater than the perceived costs because the latter are spread across the a large number of people involved. Anthropogenic factors such as deforestation for development, expansion of human activity area, exploitation of mineral products, logging of forest, exploitation of resources from forest and environmental pollution damage the habitat of Asian pangolins. Such actions are also undertaken because they satisfy their own rational self-interest while discounting the shared costs of a loss of biodiversity.